What gift items do you remember from your childhood which would never be gifts today?

[FredaFrogspawn]

Another thread ended up accidentally debating the fact that ashtrays were common gifts for weddings or twenty first birthdays. I remember big marble or onyx ones, and ones on a stand which went by the arm of the chair. No one smoked in our house and we still had a shed load of these things.
Another thing I remember is steering wheel covers, in pleather. What were those about?? And leather covers for the TV listings magazines we all had to have before papers printed what was on with ‘Radio Times’ self importantly embossed on them. (My dad kept his TV Times in there and ringed the programmes he wanted to watch with a Quink ink capitalised ‘Tell Dad When This Is On.’)

Anything else?

We called those little cube battery powered radios ‘trannies’.

@thesunwillout

I had a perfume making set, omg it was rank.

IMO you can obviously make better perfume soaking rose petals in water and leaving it in the sun for a few days!!

Mum's rose bushes were always a target 😂

Perfume! Oh I had totally forgotten, someone once gave me a box of Avon samples and I loved making new ones that all smelt like cat piss

Ooh, , yes, I loved my chemistry set - IIRC you could grow a beautiful crystal from potassium permanganate. Not sure mine ever quite worked though.

@ Whoever mentioned them, I’ve recently seen Space Hoppers on the Wicked Uncle website.

Definitely still get space hoppers although I think some are sold as hopper balls or something think it might be a trade mark.

I'd forgotten about dressing table sets. And those china dolls.

I was thinking about DS out growing the toy stage and I was thinking about Christmas what do tweens & teens get as small gifts? It used to be music tapes to go in the Walkman mentioned earlier.

Now they all have music downloaded. I even had a friend talking about kindle for her DD so that's the end of set of books.

I had a Chad Valley projector. It was battery driven and lasted about 10 minutes on four enormous batteries. It came with a set of slides, each of which had 5 or 6 coloured transparent pictures. You put the slide into a slot in the projector and pulled it through to create an enthralling (and amazingly brief) show which was projected onto a nearby blank wall. I thought it highly sophisticated.

Yes to getting blank cassettes and video tapes as stocking fillers. The former essential for taping Bruno Brookes era charts and finger hovering over the pause buttons if you didn't like the song
Definite yes to nice stationery and matching notepads and envelopes. Or even pretty notecards. I try to limit my visits to the Paperchase website because of such things.
Lots of little items from the Body Shop. They opened in my city in 1984. Was as exciting as the Woolies pick and mix.
Magna Doodle! Much preferred this to Etch A Sketch which I found frustrating.
I never had a Tomy Lights Alive - I should have been more vocal about this as I generally got whatever I asked for at Christmas

Oddly enough my dds, 14 and 12 still seem to prefer paper books to kindle. When they’re not glued to their phones that is.
So I would still get them books if we can find something they want to read. DVDs sometimes. Other than that it would be toiletries, stationery and art stuff. And clothes.

Ahh I remember drawer liners!

Stylophone - not with the association these days

Home Pride figures

Real China mini tea set. I loved mine, washed & put it away after every use. My cousin put it in the back of his chopper, did a wheelie and it smashed to bits. A couple of years ago DH found one on eBay and got it for a surprise Xmas present. Someone must have been chopping onions in the kitchen...

Space hoppers still exist - I bought one as a lockdown activity

@Graphista - I used to make the insides of my feet sore because I bounced so long on my lo-lo ball!

@Carolduckingbaskin - my DD was bought a toy sink for Christmas and she loves it! (she was also bought a tool bench which she loves equally)

Cherry lips look like them! Awful things.

Another top gift from the 70s ...sets of writing paper and envelopes in a little card folder with motifs or cartoons on. Snoopy paper was the best....

I always wanted one of those black cats with ruby eyes and a pearl necklace in dome, they were filled with perfume and i thought they were the most wonderful present a girl could ever get.

Ha you have reminded me of chocolate smokers sets, with fags and pipes and cigars, all in chocolate.

Reminds me of the pictures of a birthday party when I was about four, we are all drinking squash from paper cups emblazoned with “Players No 6”.

Note let’s/stationery
Felt Pens
Pomanders
Little baskets containing balls of wool
Nurse’s dressing up outfit
Tacky china ornaments, often those flat backed ones
Those jumping toys consisting of a frog or similar sitting on a suction cup on a spring, you pressed it down flat on the Stan and waited for the suction cup to lose suction then it jumped about six inches in the air
Puppets, glove or finger.

Anybody remember Avon 'Pretty Peach' bubble bath, talc etc?
Showing my age here sadly...

@TartanTuesday

I loved clackers, they were banned at our school as somebody smashed their knuckles with them.

The noise they made was awesome! Clackers that is, not smashed knuckles!

😂😂

@rosegoldwatcher when DD was 4 we got her a space hopper as one of her birthday presents. She started a trend as then many of her friends got one too.
I too had a space hopper when I was 4.
You can still buy them now.

@MrsAvocet I still look for the Cadburys Dairy Milk dispensers on eBay, they were never bettered! But haven't found one. Worked with a 10p and you could get special boxes of the mini bars to slide into them.

A flower press made quite a regular appearance as a present. Not the most stimulating item.
Those little creatures that gripped your finger/a lamp stem. Usually, but not always, monkeys. Possibly had a second purpose as a suck-a-thumb toy.

Purses covered in tiny plastic beads you could pick off
Yardley lemon soaps
Pomanders
Pack a macs and rain headscarf things made from plastic

Paint by numbers - I loved those !

I loved my fuzzy felts and Spirograph! I also remember begging my mum for a skippit, and also a skipping rope with a counter. Body shop bath balls were another thing we coveted (they were only about 25p each lol 😂) and sheets of stickers.. furries and shinies were the best!

I always wanted one of those tin coffin money boxes where the monster grabbed the coin. So cool

My sister had one of thise Vulgarlady! You had to wind it up and then a skeleton sat up and grabbed the coin. She painted it with glow in the dark paint for extra effect. (? toxic?radioactive ) I was terrified of it as a small child!

I loved stickle bricks too do they still have them?

The birthday before starting high school I got as gifts a geography book which was a huge hardback tome containing 4 pages of information for every country in the world, divided by continents with 4 pages per continent too. It contained information like population size, languages spoken, currency (and this at a time WAY before the Euro when all European countries had their own currency - I miss that) type of govt etc - overtaken by internet/Wikipedia now but at the time I loved it, found it completely fascinating.

Also a history book with all the kings and queens of England and then Britain when that happened, divided by the royal houses and containing a biography of each. This began my fascination with lady Jane grey who had the shortest reign but quite a long bio as her story affects so much!

@MrsAvocet clackers were famously banned as they were so bloody dangerous!

Water filled sausage things that jumped out of your hand

Oh that's reminded me! Anyone remember toy rubber spiders/octopus that you threw at the wall and it then "crawled" down the wall? My mum hated them

1 they'd give her a fright
2 they marked the walls and we were in army quarters!

If I found a plug in my Christmas stocking I knew that my dad had bought me something electrical for my 'big' present. In those days hair tongs etc came without a plug attached

Omg that's reminded me! - getting batteries as a gift had a similar significance!

@itssquidstella I was quite good on mine, iirc I got to a point I could do 100 hops without pause.

@Blackbear19 it's SO hard buying for tweens/early teens now that music and books are no longer desired or needed gifts. Slightly easier with girls as you can go the hair/make up/toiletries route but that age is when it starts getting REALLY expensive as you're into the computer games and tech stage. Nightmare!

@BabyMoonPie ouch! Poor you!